Security experts have issued several warnings about security holes in recent versions of the Java software from Oracle. Java is used in web browsers across operating systems like Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and is primarily used by websites to display dynamic content on your browser and some downloadable applications.

In order to protect yourself it’s important to understand how a phishing attack occurs. Phishing basically comes down to this: An identity thief composes an email that looks official and sends it out to a huge lists of emails that may be either generated by a computer or obtained by other sources. This official looking email ends up in your inbox and usually prompts you to do something like re-verify personal information, like your email address and password. There may be a link in the email that appears to take you to a legitimate website.

How effective is your strong password if an identity thief can change it themselves?

Plenty of attention has been given to helping find ways to generate stronger passwords–avoiding birthdays, pet names, phone numbers, and of course, the list of the most popular, such as “password”, “love”, “hope”, etc. But now that users are starting to make their passwords harder to guess, identity thieves are turning to a new weapon—the secret question.